What It’s Like to Take Part in Journeys? Experiences From Our Last Demo Day

Last month, the previous cohort reached its final evening in Valkoinen Sali, hosting more than one hundred and seventy guests, mentors from Finland and abroad, partners, friends, and families, gathered to watch the teams present the businesses they had been shaping for months. The evening was hosted by the one and only , who kept things moving with an easy charm and the perfect sense of timing. Our judges, , from , from , and from CPTO, listened as each group stepped forward to explain what they had built, and prove who they had become in the process. For many of the founders, the evening felt less like a competition and more like a reunion.

Among the crowd was , founder of 3KULMIO, a platform that makes interior design easier by generating personalized floor plans, furnishing suggestions, and ready-to-use shopping lists. When asked what had mattered most to her during the programme, Emma didn’t hesitate. “Mentors,” she said. “I had such a great mentor. I got really lucky by having mentors that really supported me and liked my idea. I really connected with them.”

She also spoke about discovering a world she hadn’t known existed. “Every event and startup thingy that there is going on that I didn’t know before I started here,” she said, laughing slightly. “I was really happy to join those events during the program.”

Emma’s background is in design, not business. “Not at all,” she said, when asked if she had entrepreneurial experience. “I’m a designer by background. It’s really far from this.”

Yet somewhere between workshops, mentor meetings, and late-night conversations with other founders, that distance began to shrink. “Now I feel like I could dive into this different side,” she said. “Or a different kind of angle. I’m still doing my own design stuff, so the angle is super different, which is really nice. And having the support team here in this background also is really important. I really value everything.”

After the last pitch, the room shifted into a different mode. Chairs were moved aside, laptops opened, and teams stood behind small tables, showing their products, answering questions, and explaining what they had been working on. A few investors walked through the space, stopping when something caught their interest.

At one of the stands were and from Syllabuss, part of the social impact track. Asked how it felt to finish the programme, Pradham kept it simple. “I feel proud,” he said. “And I feel proud of all the teams. Seeing the progress of everyone gives this sense of belonging to a community that actually does something productive. That was the biggest thing for me.”

Michal talked about the change from the beginning. “I started in the pre-incubator, and we had nothing then,” he said. “Now we have an MVP, and an actual product. It’s nice to see.” When asked about the most valuable part of the programme, Michal pointed to practical support. “Refining our pitch deck. Learning how to pitch. Mentorship. Seeing how to take our business forward,” he said.

And that is, in a practical sense, what the programme is built around: putting teams in the same room as people who have already made the mistakes, learned the patterns, and are willing to pass those lessons on. One of those people is , who has spent much of the past months working closely with teams on pitching and communication. 

For him, this year stood out because pitching was introduced earlier in the programme than before. “In previous years, pitching came too late,” he explained. “This time we started earlier, and it made a difference.” After sessions, teams would come back with feedback, telling him the training was useful, clear, and easy to follow. He smiled at that. “When they tell you that you are teaching them something in an easy way, that’s enough for me,” he said. “It doesn’t just fill my soul. It fills my heart.”

The same could be said for , one of the programme’s long-standing mentors, who travelled from Stockholm to Helsinki to attend the final evening. She has been involved since the early days, watching multiple cohorts pass through the same rooms with different ideas and the same mixture of uncertainty and ambition.

When asked what keeps bringing her back year after year, she didn’t talk about results or valuations. She talked about proximity to beginnings. She said she enjoys working with entrepreneurs at different stages, but especially at the very start, when ideas are still flexible and nothing feels fully decided. “There is something very special about being close to that moment of discovery,” she said. “When people are still figuring out what they’re building and who they are as founders. It reminds me why I enjoy this work in the first place.”

True passion and dedication come from the people who choose to show up for each other: mentors, founders, organizers, and a community that keeps growing with every cohort. With this programme now coming to a close, we welcome a new group of teams into our alumni community, and we’re proud of what they have already built and what they continue to work toward.

If you’re reading this and wondering what your own version of that journey might look like, applications for the next Journeys programme are open until 8 February. You could be one of the teams standing in a big stage a few months from now, presenting something that once existed only as an idea. More information and the application form can be found !